Preparation Of Activated Carbon By Thermosetting Epoxy Resin And PCBs

Nowadays with the rapid development of social econmy,electronic products arefrequently upgraded,which continuously brings great pressure to the environmentalprotection and resource recovery. At present, China has become the world’s largestcountry producing thermosetting epoxy resin of printed circuit board.The study on themethod of recycling thermosetting epoxy resin composite materials used in printedcircuit board not only allows the use of waste to be reasonable, but also reducesenvironmental pollution and protects the environment.Activated carbon is an excellentadsorbent materials,it has many advantages,such as huge specific surface area,richsurface functional groups, fine chemical stability, sufficient mechanicalstrength,excellent acid and alkali resistance,heat resistance and so on.It use asadsorption,catalyst,carrier in many fields because of its advantages.In this thesis,the activated carbon was prepared by the two-steps carbonization-activation processes and the one-step carbonization&activation process with epoxyresin and PCB,used KOH,K₂CO₃,NaOH and Na₂CO₃as activations.The influence oftemperature,time and the ratio of activator/material on methylene blue value werediscussed.Box-behnken design was applied using Design-Expert software to optimizethe conditions of preparation according RSM.These results showed that the high adsorption of methylene blue activated crbonwere prepared by chemical activation with KOH or NaOH; K₂CO₃had goodadsorption value of methylene blue too;and the study also found that K₂CO₃activatorcan reuse,there were no effect on the adsorption of methylene blue and yield ofactivated carbon. Products performance were stabilized.FTIR was applied to characterize activated carbon’s functional groups, theresults showed the there were many oxygen-containing groups.At the same time,TGcurves were obtained by thermogravimetric analyzer.Nitrogen adsorption isotherms and specific surface area of the activated carbonprepared were measured by a specific surface area and pore structure analyzer.The specific surface area of activated carbon which made from thermosetting epoxy resinwas2819.79m²/g, the pore volume was1.51cm³/g; The specific surface area of twoactivated carbons which made from PCB were1075m²/g and1078m²/g, the porevolume were0.64cm³/g and0.58cm³/g.In summary,a new method for resue thermosetting epoxy resin and PCB was putforward.In this process had many advantages,such as reducing environmentalpollution,broading raw materials for activated carbon,supplying new pathway forPCB,it will be of great significance to develop recycling economy for industry.